2008: With Force

The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

This is one time where you cannot judge a book by its cover. I picked up this book at a not so local library on my way home from uni. I was tired, I need some escape and was going to find it in a depressing 'young adult' novel but when I saw it on the shelf I put it right back and swore I would never ever read anything that had a ghastly cover such as that. I was so terribly wrong.

Two weeks later I was studying the controversial nature of shock therapy and lobotomy and Sylvia Plath's name popped up. Plath was a depressive creature, a suicide attempt by the age of 20 and years of harrowing electro-shock and insulin therapy but most importantly of all she was a writer. Amongst the most beautiful confessional poetry I have ever seen she also wrote one novel, 'The Bell Jar', a few weeks after its publication she killed herself. 

I  just had to read it.

 The first chance I could I stormed backed through to the young adult section tore the book off the shelf and read the first chapter walking through the subway onto Flinders' Street.

It quite honestly defies description. 

You can find so many things wrong with this novel when you first look at it: putrid teenaged suited coming of age cover, obscure title and vile blurb. There is nothing alluring about wanting to know what happens to Esther Greenwood, the thin, fake and fantastically smart girl who wins a scholarship to some swanky magazine firm, surrounds herself with dull and impervious friends and rancid sex hungry men. That is until you read the novel. 

It's true Esther is at first a most dislikable character, her academic excellence leaves you envious, her whimsical view of men is unrealistic and her obsession with her non-existance can quite rightly leave you bored. But you have to see that that's exactly what Esther is, this void of a human gripped with a most profound sense of depravity, unwittingly trapped in the most relentless disease, depression.

We all seem to bawk at clinical depression nowadays, it's something that everyone seems to suffer every now and again. The Beyond Blue posters on the trams stalk you on a bad day and every one knows someone whether it be a friend of a friend's cousin's grandmother who's taking anti-depressants because they find life too difficult it's not hard to sit and wonder what the big deal is. So you're sad, wow. You'll get over it, right? No. And that's the most poignant point in this novel. Depression is not a temporary sadness it a colossal fall into depths of emptiness, non existence. And Sylvia Plath describes this condition within her historical context with the utmost precision. 

Esther is a girl trapped in a bell jar. All the precious comfort of her life that we see her take for granted in the first couple of chapters starts to crumble away as Esther is gripped with intense delusion. A wonderful thing about this novel is that it is narrated in the first person and you get to see first hand how Esther tears away at herself and strips bear every character present within the novel beside her.  Her mother is pathetic and weak, her friends are counterfeit and careless (pay particular attention to Joan) and her if you could call him her boyfriend, Buddy, is the most simplistic flake of a man who could possibly encounter. And everything, everything, pales away into this monotonous insignificance and it seems almost logical that Esther pans out the way she does. Absolutely logical. And Sylvia Plath seems the only one adequate to describe this descent into darkness so beautifully:

"I lifted my razor and let it drop of its own weight, like a guillotine, on to the calf of my leg. I felt nothing. Then I felt a small, deep thrill, and a bright seam of red welled up at the lip of the slash. The blood gathered darkly, like fruit, and rolled down my ankle into the cup of my black patent leather shoe."

Its tragic scenes like this (oh and I assure you there are many more) written so poetically that leave you abstract from the real anguish of Esther's actions and sometimes it just leaves you so bitterly numb.

For the most confronting delve into the world of psychosis, Plath's phenomenally written 'Bell Jar' is simply, a must read.

This isn't one of my challenge books but I do think it should be duly noted that I do read about twice the amount of non-fiction matter than I do fiction. I've never been able to figure out why. I suppose it's that incessant need to process information (this is what high-school hardwires you to do) or to constantly search for an answer.

So, I thought, I should list some of my all time favourite non-fiction books, starting with 'Blink', the one I have most recently read.

'Blink' is a difficult book to describe in words. It's ultimate goal is to show you the power of intuition and ultimately it's setbacks. But it does so in a very different way. The entire book is composed of anecdotal evidence and I mean the entire book. This makes the book an amazingly easy to read (your right side of your brain loves stories, it really does), it keeps you engaged from start to finish. But although 'Blink' wows you with the superiority of split second thinking and inundates you with beautiful examples of thinkers who use their intuition with utmost supremacy, it never once tells you how to harness this potential yourself. This I found very frustrating the for the first chapter.  So it should be noted that this isn't a self-help book at all. It merely illustrates a psychological phenomenon. That said, once you've realised you are not going to be preached at, 'Blink' manages to completely change your perspective of analytical thinking.

It sort of laughs in the face of modern conscious analysis. In fact 'Blink' asserts the fact that we can make a momentary decision based on very little information at all (called 'thin-slicing'), simply because our brains have been wired to do so, it's a survival mechanism. And we all know it, it' s just that we don't know that we know. For example, we all judge people from the moment we see them (I think it takes three seconds, something like that. I know that women really spot the backs of shoes. Weird fact.) and although this judgement can be marred with social prejudice and racism, we often 'know' what we 'feel' is right about this person and most of the time we're absolutely spot on. Apparently reading body language is our most fundamental skill, as human beings. From the tiniest micro-expression on someone cheeks we can unearth someone's deception unconsciously without any effort (although this does take ions of practice, may I remind).

The most interesting point presented in this book is that conscious, drawn out analytical thinking (the type that is so loving paraded about at school) is far too slow and tedious to ever be used effectively in our day to day lives (yay!). One fantastic example used in the book was that of a fire fighter chief, who being called out to a kitchen fire in a house in Cleveland. After storming the house the routine way with his colleagues, the fire men proceeded to douse the fire, it didn't extinguish, it should have. The chief immediately sensed that something was wrong and ordered his men to evacuate the building, moments later the floor they were standing on had collapsed. The fire had been in the basement, not the kitchen as thought. When the chief was asked how he knew to evacuate his team when he did, he couldn't not answer, pegging it down to 'ESP'. It took hours of 'analytical' questioning to find come to the source of the chief's intuition. The dubious  feeling of danger that the chief experienced was really due to the fact that the fire 'didn't behave the way it was supposed to' it  a) didn't respond to water b) it was far too hot and c) it wasn't noisy. All of this information was collected and decided upon on in one fleeting moment, a 'blink' moment. If the chief had talked the process through rationally (as is encouraged everywhere), considering every possible problem and solution those firemen would have perished.

All those times your gut feeling has been the 'right' feeling doesn't seem so very mysterious anymore. Almost a voyeuristic peek into the human psyche.

'The Outsider (The Stranger)' Albert Camus

"Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure."

That was the first line. And I didn't know what to make of it.

 I recall the first moment I saw this book with absolutely clarity. It was at a speed-reading seminar that claimed to double my reading rate by the end of the day. I think they lied. But I did speed read the first half for novel and was forever intimidated by it; particularly of Mersault, the leading figure.

 From the very first line of you know, you're in for an experience that's entirely different. Strikingly alien. Set in the whimsical horror of Algeria, but also torn between another world, the 'outside'.

 But ironically, 'The Outsider's' purpose is not to be 'different'. It is built to choke out the truth in this world, to convey the essential veracity of existentialism, the world without meaning.

 And Mersault becomes the perfect example of a man searching for purpose. He is 'the 'outsider' in every moment of his life. Everything he experiences is so vividly disconnected from any sort of emotion. He is devoid of reality. 

"A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I suppose I didn't.

 
Mersault is constantly speaking of the universe from an alien perspective. Actions 'happen', emotions are 'seen', feelings are 'tangible' but always from the outside, never from within.

 
"I'd rather lost the habit of noting my feelings"

 
Mersault's disjointed experience of the world is scorned by his greater society which leaves him ironically, outside a world from which he is already disconnected.   And although he is able to play the role of the average human being with a simple air, eating, breathing, working with perfect diligence even fabricating an odd passionate fling with a girl, he unwittingly butts himself against a world that cannot contain him. When accused of the heinous crime of murder, it is 'the outsider' who's honest character is convoluted and pushed further into the field of disillusion.

 It is this disillusionment that begets the ultimate conclusion: 'life isn't worth living anyhow'. The existentialist triumphs.

 This thrilling peak into the world of the existentialist Mersault, angers, frightens, confronts and belittles you but it also spawns within you a feeling of complete awe. And by the time the last line is read you are left severely confused. And  a frightening question begins to burn deep in the recesses of your mind: 'am I really part of something greater?"

Disturbingly mind provoking.

 Marta is very good at suggesting novel titles. She suggested this one because she believed the heroine, Stargirl Caraway reminded her of me and she told me that I'd fall in love with this novel and I did, from the very first page.

The New York Times  acclaim for 'Stargirl' puts the synopsis of this novel into very accurate terms: "a poetic allegorical tale about the magnificence and rarity of true nonconformity" and although this story is marketed to 'young adults' it touches a theme that some adults often struggle with, conformity.

Narrated by the not-quite there Leo Borlock, 'Stargirl' captures the quiet existence of 'Stargirl Carraway' in the tiny town of Mica. Stargirl is markedly different from what Mica considers 'normal'. Ukulele playing, card making, high spirited Stargirl is alien to the culture of conformity and questions it with vigour. The residents of Mica find her nature unnatural and sheltered but decide to embrace her because they find her enchanting. And Stargirl is enchanting. She is the antithesis of 'normal' but yet she is the individual we secretly want to be:

 

"Nobody has the time," she said. "The time cannot be owned.' She threw out her arms and twirled till her multi-coloured skirt looked like a pinwheel taffy. "The time is free to everyone!"

 
Jerry Spinelli makes this novel a true masterpiece not only with the perfect hero's triumph and thrilling and complex characters but with his elegant writing. Marta did warn me that this novel can sound deceptively simplistic but she also did mention to look out for the beautiful metaphors and I share this favourite metaphor with her:

 
"She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew."

I appreciate this novel from a non-conformist standpoint. Yes, I too am a non-conformist, not because I am still a teenager and think the world wants to eat me or I have some ridiculous point to stress but simply because I value difference and uniqueness. I don't snub my nose at elitist societies (although I do wish I were a part of them) or carry the dreaded 'tall poppy syndrome' that Australians are well known for, nor do I shun those who are drastically different to what I consider 'normal'. But because I am human too I do understand the need for conformity because we are a communal species, we need to belong in order to survive. But what 'Stargirl' touches on that no conformist can deny is that when our identity as a group becomes so globalised we no longer have identity at all.

 

 

n.b. For the keen ones, Marta does an excellent review of this story as well.
 

'Of Mice and Men' John Steinbeck

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“Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love” [Susan Shillinglaw]

This is a novel that evokes the ultimate catharsis. Steinbeck sets this novel in the height of ‘The Great Depression’ but realistically it’s universal.  George and Lennie, two drifters, in search of work differ themselves from the swarm of labourers by their simple dream and their intense friendship.

1. January: 'Of Mice and Men' John Steinbeck
                'Stargirl' Jerry Spinelli 
2. February: 'The Outsider (The Stranger)' Albert Camus
                  'The Go Between' L.P. Hartley
3. March: 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' Peter Hedges
4. April: 'Lolita' Vladimir Nabokov
5. May: 'Grapes of Wrath' John Steinbeck
6. June: 'Catch 22' Joseph Heller
7. July: 'For Whom the Bells Toll' Ernest Hemingway
8. August:'Vanity Fair' William Makepeace Thackeray
9. September: 'Wuthering Heights' Emily Brontë
10. October: 'Clockwork Orange' Anthony Burgess
    
11. November:'Anna Karenina' Leo Tolstoy
12. December: 'Great Expectations' Charles Dickens